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If someone wants rules for opening doors and elevation in their games they should play RPGs, Stuff like that or the hight on which a model is only burdens the game, which works much better which would work a lot better, if it is abstract.

Or if the rules really have to be used. Then give the models on elevation a +1 to size, or their size is treated as the size of a building. So if you decide to plant yourself on the 4th floor or a tier 5 building you are now size 5 and everyone sees you, just the same way you see everyone not hidden behind a size 5 building.

40K would be a more robust, well rounded game if it took a page from battletech and alpha strike. Both of those games focus on a core set of rules that serve their intended purposes and then offer extended optional rules to add weather effects, mine fields, hidden units, electronic warfare, campaign progression and more. What is even cooler is that these two rulesets are designed to serve two different types of players or levels of engagement.

40k has turned itself into this constraining and increasingly unknowable leviathan that all must subject themselves toward lest they break the social contract. I don't care for the current rules philosophy on a core level, and neither do I have any official options to change the game to suit my purposes. I don't like stratagems, I don't like how aircraft are implemented at all. The official board size is far too small. The igougo system is fundamentally flawed, and I'd like to see a positional flanking mechanic added. Battletech and Alpha Strike either have options to change activations, implement scenario special rules, multiple ways of calculating damage, and dealing with aircraft, artillery, etc.

40k by comparison is a bloated mess spread across tons of books with nothing of substance in them.

Of course i'm going to prefer to use community rules. Gw hasn't provided me anything that allows me to play the way i want to. Instead I MUST play a certain way.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
40K would be a more robust, well rounded game if it took a page from battletech and alpha strike. Both of those games focus on a core set of rules that serve their intended purposes and then offer extended optional rules to add weather effects, mine fields, hidden units, electronic warfare, campaign progression and more. What is even cooler is that these two rulesets are designed to serve two different types of players or levels of engagement.

40k has turned itself into this constraining and increasingly unknowable leviathan that all must subject themselves toward lest they break the social contract. I don't care for the current rules philosophy on a core level, and neither do I have any official options to change the game to suit my purposes. I don't like stratagems, I don't like how aircraft are implemented at all. The official board size is far too small. The igougo system is fundamentally flawed, and I'd like to see a positional flanking mechanic added. Battletech and Alpha Strike either have options to change activations, implement scenario special rules, multiple ways of calculating damage, and dealing with aircraft, artillery, etc.

40k by comparison is a bloated mess spread across tons of books with nothing of substance in them.

Of course i'm going to prefer to use community rules. Gw hasn't provided me anything that allows me to play the way i want to. Instead I MUST play a certain way.

in GW's defence that's a community problem as much as it is GW's. I remember GW releasing new ways to play a fair bit, things like death from the skies planet strike etc, where all released and resoundedly ignored by the player base whose mantra seemed to be "TOURNY RULES ONLY DUDE!"

If the 40k community started playing battletech they'd buy total warfare and have no further intreast in rules books.

now granted in a lot of cases te books gw provides don't give new optional rules that can be slotted in selectively.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
40K would be a more robust, well rounded game if it took a page from battletech and alpha strike. Both of those games focus on a core set of rules that serve their intended purposes and then offer extended optional rules to add weather effects, mine fields, hidden units, electronic warfare, campaign progression and more. What is even cooler is that these two rulesets are designed to serve two different types of players or levels of engagement.

40k has turned itself into this constraining and increasingly unknowable leviathan that all must subject themselves toward lest they break the social contract. I don't care for the current rules philosophy on a core level, and neither do I have any official options to change the game to suit my purposes. I don't like stratagems, I don't like how aircraft are implemented at all. The official board size is far too small. The igougo system is fundamentally flawed, and I'd like to see a positional flanking mechanic added. Battletech and Alpha Strike either have options to change activations, implement scenario special rules, multiple ways of calculating damage, and dealing with aircraft, artillery, etc.

40k by comparison is a bloated mess spread across tons of books with nothing of substance in them.

Of course i'm going to prefer to use community rules. Gw hasn't provided me anything that allows me to play the way i want to. Instead I MUST play a certain way.

in GW's defence that's a community problem as much as it is GW's. I remember GW releasing new ways to play a fair bit, things like death from the skies planet strike etc, where all released and resoundedly ignored by the player base whose mantra seemed to be "TOURNY RULES ONLY DUDE!"

If the 40k community started playing battletech they'd buy total warfare and have no further intreast in rules books.

now granted in a lot of cases te books gw provides don't give new optional rules that can be slotted in selectively.

Apocalypse was very popular when it was initially released. City Fight was as well if I recall. But both of those released during more popular editions unlike Death From The Skies (7th) and Planetstrike (6th). Its nothing to do with the community and everything to do with the foundations. If you don't have a good base for a game adding additional stuff on top is not going to work.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Apocalypse was very popular when it was initially released. City Fight was as well if I recall. But both of those released during more popular editions unlike Death From The Skies (7th) and Planetstrike (6th). Its nothing to do with the community and everything to do with the foundations. If you don't have a good base for a game adding additional stuff on top is not going to work.

Planetstrike released in 5th, FWIW.

Totally forgot about planetstrike. All I remember is being rather excited about it... don't remember anything else though lol

Planetstrike and subsequently Planetary Onslaught are the best supplements ever released that no one played.

 oni wrote:
Planetstrike and subsequently Planetary Onslaught are the best supplements ever released that no one played.

There has been a crusade version of those rules, sadly they are horribly balanced so it's no fun playing them. The attacker simply always wins, the defender doesn't stand a chance. Fortifications simply aren't durable enough compared to the weapons armies bring.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
40K would be a more robust, well rounded game if it took a page from battletech and alpha strike. Both of those games focus on a core set of rules that serve their intended purposes and then offer extended optional rules to add weather effects, mine fields, hidden units, electronic warfare, campaign progression and more. What is even cooler is that these two rulesets are designed to serve two different types of players or levels of engagement.

40k has turned itself into this constraining and increasingly unknowable leviathan that all must subject themselves toward lest they break the social contract. I don't care for the current rules philosophy on a core level, and neither do I have any official options to change the game to suit my purposes. I don't like stratagems, I don't like how aircraft are implemented at all. The official board size is far too small. The igougo system is fundamentally flawed, and I'd like to see a positional flanking mechanic added. Battletech and Alpha Strike either have options to change activations, implement scenario special rules, multiple ways of calculating damage, and dealing with aircraft, artillery, etc.

40k by comparison is a bloated mess spread across tons of books with nothing of substance in them.

Of course i'm going to prefer to use community rules. Gw hasn't provided me anything that allows me to play the way i want to. Instead I MUST play a certain way.

in GW's defence that's a community problem as much as it is GW's. I remember GW releasing new ways to play a fair bit, things like death from the skies planet strike etc, where all released and resoundedly ignored by the player base whose mantra seemed to be "TOURNY RULES ONLY DUDE!"

If the 40k community started playing battletech they'd buy total warfare and have no further intreast in rules books.

now granted in a lot of cases te books gw provides don't give new optional rules that can be slotted in selectively.

So that's a lie. Look at Crusade and Matched, two good game modes serving different interests, some people like one or the other and some people like both.

 Jidmah wrote:

 oni wrote:
Planetstrike and subsequently Planetary Onslaught are the best supplements ever released that no one played.

There has been a crusade version of those rules, sadly they are horribly balanced so it's no fun playing them. The attacker simply always wins, the defender doesn't stand a chance. Fortifications simply aren't durable enough compared to the weapons armies bring.

What book are they in? I'd like to try fixing them for fun.

 Jidmah wrote:
There has been a crusade version of those rules, sadly they are horribly balanced so it's no fun playing them. The attacker simply always wins, the defender doesn't stand a chance. Fortifications simply aren't durable enough compared to the weapons armies bring.

Good match to the original planetstrike then. You had to negotiate the game with your opponent in advance to balance things out - we tried throwing planetstrike games into a tournament once and it was ugly. Army-wide charge from deepstrike with melta blood angels and that kind of stuff.

Aside from one hilarious game where the defender took bad sportsmanship to the most extreme level possible (think the walls of the Imperial Palace, an impassible terrain trench, and then about four feet of barren killing field). But he hadn't read the rules for deployment as it's the attacker rather than the defender that chooses their table edge...

Any game system that requires long time arguments what can or can not be done durning the game are both a hallmark of a bad game, and what we call "magic" happening durning the game.

 vict0988 wrote:

What book are they in? I'd like to try fixing them for fun.

It was the Octarius Campaign. The missions are in the Crusade Mission Packs. It may also be helpful to have the hardback books, because Fortifications can earn battle honours, which might address some of the balance issues mentioned. I have both campaign books from Octarius, but neither of the mission packs.

If you go to Goonhammer and do a search for Octarius, they have detailed reviews of all the mission packs and campaign books that tell you exactly what is in each book so that you can make an informed decision about which books you might like to get a look at.

It's also worth mentioning that the books are no longer available from the GW webstore, so it might take some creativity to find what you're looking for.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 oni wrote:
Planetstrike and subsequently Planetary Onslaught are the best supplements ever released that no one played.

There has been a crusade version of those rules, sadly they are horribly balanced so it's no fun playing them. The attacker simply always wins, the defender doesn't stand a chance. Fortifications simply aren't durable enough compared to the weapons armies bring.

What book are they in? I'd like to try fixing them for fun.

They are in Crusade Mission Pack: Containment - in fact, there is little else in that book. All the missions, stratagems, warlord traits and battle honors are related to planet strike. It's bummer that the rules are as bad as they are.

If you want to rebalance them, I'd probably start by taking away the firestorm and forcing the attacker to reserve everything.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

A.T. wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
There has been a crusade version of those rules, sadly they are horribly balanced so it's no fun playing them. The attacker simply always wins, the defender doesn't stand a chance. Fortifications simply aren't durable enough compared to the weapons armies bring.

Good match to the original planetstrike then. You had to negotiate the game with your opponent in advance to balance things out - we tried throwing planetstrike games into a tournament once and it was ugly. Army-wide charge from deepstrike with melta blood angels and that kind of stuff.

It's really not a matter of competitive play or armies being too strong. A bastion or even a fortress of redemption simply isn't going to survive the first shooting phase, period. And that's the only thing the defender has going for them, the attacker gets guaranteed first turn, a preliminary bombardment that can cause a ton of mortal wounds with good rolls, free deep strikes on many units and can deploy from almost any edge guaranteeing first turn charges for any but the slowest units.

I did an entire chapter in may campaign with planet strike only missions (you know, because it was the chapter of the invaders landing on the planet) using rules as written, and it was a complete disaster. Six out of seven games were decided after turn 1 and tabled or conceded turn 2. The one game that didn't go completely south was me with a heavily tuned down list vs a very good player who only managed to have a single character left after my third turn and was tabled T4 anyways.

And I'm not talking about competitive lists or great players here, the game mode is just off by that much.

 vict0988 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
40K would be a more robust, well rounded game if it took a page from battletech and alpha strike. Both of those games focus on a core set of rules that serve their intended purposes and then offer extended optional rules to add weather effects, mine fields, hidden units, electronic warfare, campaign progression and more. What is even cooler is that these two rulesets are designed to serve two different types of players or levels of engagement.

40k has turned itself into this constraining and increasingly unknowable leviathan that all must subject themselves toward lest they break the social contract. I don't care for the current rules philosophy on a core level, and neither do I have any official options to change the game to suit my purposes. I don't like stratagems, I don't like how aircraft are implemented at all. The official board size is far too small. The igougo system is fundamentally flawed, and I'd like to see a positional flanking mechanic added. Battletech and Alpha Strike either have options to change activations, implement scenario special rules, multiple ways of calculating damage, and dealing with aircraft, artillery, etc.

40k by comparison is a bloated mess spread across tons of books with nothing of substance in them.

Of course i'm going to prefer to use community rules. Gw hasn't provided me anything that allows me to play the way i want to. Instead I MUST play a certain way.

in GW's defence that's a community problem as much as it is GW's. I remember GW releasing new ways to play a fair bit, things like death from the skies planet strike etc, where all released and resoundedly ignored by the player base whose mantra seemed to be "TOURNY RULES ONLY DUDE!"

If the 40k community started playing battletech they'd buy total warfare and have no further intreast in rules books.

now granted in a lot of cases te books gw provides don't give new optional rules that can be slotted in selectively.

So that's a lie. Look at Crusade and Matched, two good game modes serving different interests, some people like one or the other and some people like both.

 Jidmah wrote:

 oni wrote:
Planetstrike and subsequently Planetary Onslaught are the best supplements ever released that no one played.

There has been a crusade version of those rules, sadly they are horribly balanced so it's no fun playing them. The attacker simply always wins, the defender doesn't stand a chance. Fortifications simply aren't durable enough compared to the weapons armies bring.

What book are they in? I'd like to try fixing them for fun.

The problem with crusade is that it is built on a poor foundation to start with, and truly offers very little additional value except for spending and gaining rp.

In addition their "campaign" books are not written with a specific goal in mind and come across as schizophrenic throw away bloat that primarily is used for just a couple of pages by the community at large. To top it off its all going to go in the dumpster in the next year when the next edition comes out.

By contrast 5th edition proved to be a much better foundation. One that actually allowed for all of the forge world books to persist until 7th edition along with planet strike and apocalypse.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PenitentJake wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

What book are they in? I'd like to try fixing them for fun.

It was the Octarius Campaign. The missions are in the Crusade Mission Packs. It may also be helpful to have the hardback books, because Fortifications can earn battle honours, which might address some of the balance issues mentioned. I have both campaign books from Octarius, but neither of the mission packs.

If you go to Goonhammer and do a search for Octarius, they have detailed reviews of all the mission packs and campaign books that tell you exactly what is in each book so that you can make an informed decision about which books you might like to get a look at.

It's also worth mentioning that the books are no longer available from the GW webstore, so it might take some creativity to find what you're looking for.

So in other words it was literally a throw away afterthought and not intended as a tool for the community to use.

GW can say there are two or three ways to play all they want, but if they don't make the tools, what the hell is the community going to use? The answer is the ones they provide (tournament matched play) or community rules.

 vict0988 wrote:
So that's a lie. Look at Crusade and Matched, two good game modes serving different interests, some people like one or the other and some people like both.

It's not a lie. Crusade exists, meanwhile the matched and specifically the tournament side of things is what everything else revolves around.

Do we have giant threads to discuss the latest crusade campaign book or mission set, or do we have threads that go on forever discussing the latest "balance" dataslate?

9th is Tournament Edition 40k. Has been since the start. It's nice that Crusade is there, and I'm glad GW have almost managed to release every Codex without abandoning it completely, but in the grand calculus of the multiverse, the "tournament" side of 40k is what's steering the game. And it's why, in the past, things like Cities of Death, Planet Strike and other similar things - as much as you or I may love them - have never caught on in a big way.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Spoiler:

 vict0988 wrote:
So that's a lie. Look at Crusade and Matched, two good game modes serving different interests, some people like one or the other and some people like both.

It's not a lie. Crusade exists, meanwhile the matched and specifically the tournament side of things is what everything else revolves around.

Do we have giant threads to discuss the latest crusade campaign book or mission set, or do we have threads that go on forever discussing the latest "balance" dataslate?

9th is Tournament Edition 40k. Has been since the start. It's nice that Crusade is there, and I'm glad GW have almost managed to release every Codex without abandoning it completely, but in the grand calculus of the multiverse, the "tournament" side of 40k is what's steering the game. And it's why, in the past, things like Cities of Death, Planet Strike and other similar things - as much as you or I may love them - have never caught on in a big way.

Yeah, pretty much this...which is fething sad!

So just a heads up: we're all going to end up agreeing to disagree, and I don't bear anyone any ill will- but you guys know that trash talking Crusade is the verbal component for the second level "Summon PenitentJake" spell, right?

 Sledgehammer wrote:


The problem with crusade is that it is built on a poor foundation to start with, and truly offers very little additional value except for spending and gaining rp.

I won't bother with the first part of the sentence - I know not everyone likes 9th- especially here: but I would say the second part is way off- the territory rules in the DE dex, for example, create a whole new minigame. My favourite part of the Sisters dex is the Penitent/ Redemption agenda cycle. And even without those rules, I'd still say XP are more fun than RP... And you don't get those without Agendas, so those tie-in too.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

In addition their "campaign" books are not written with a specific goal in mind and come across as schizophrenic throw away bloat that primarily is used for just a couple of pages by the community at large. To top it off its all going to go in the dumpster in the next year when the next edition comes out.

If this is true, it's even more true of Matched Play Mission Packs- only the current GT pack is ever played- including at tournaments. If anything, Crusade packs have MORE longevity- if you want Planetstrike, the Crusade Mission Pack is where you find it, and that is going to be true no matter what season it is. Ditto for the rules for multiplayer games. Matched Play packs, on the other hand, have no theme to the missions they contain, and therefore, nothing to keep them relevant once the next set of generic MP missions arrive.

And ALL books "go in the dumpster" when a new edition drops- the BRB, the Dexes... All of it. That ain't a Crusade issue, nor is it any worse for Crusade than it is for anything else that gets dumped... Which, again, is EVERYTHING.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

By contrast 5th edition proved to be a much better foundation.

You might prefer it, and that's a valid opinion. But love it or hate it, 9th ed's symbiosis between its core rules and its progression system is far greater than the symbiosis between the core rules and any of the afterthought progression systems provided with any previous edition. Progression directly impacts almost all of the rules for the game itself, whether that's strats, unit types, unit identities, game size, detachment limits... it goes on and on. You might prefer armour facings, going to ground mechanics, blast templates, and maybe most importantly: diverse equipment and load out options for every unit- that's certainly valid... but the interaction between those rules and any previous attempt at a progression system is nowhere near as great as the numerous layers of interactions with relics, strats and datacards.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

One that actually allowed for all of the forge world books to persist until 7th edition along with planet strike and apocalypse.

Just like all the other 8th edition stuff can still be used with 9th. When 10th comes, I don't think it'll be a full reset either... Though I suppose it could be.

I never read any of the FW campaign books, though I don't think I've heard anyone say a bad thing about them. I won't argue that current campaign books couldn't be improved- we certainly don't need 5 per season. The limited time availability of them is certainly problematic as well.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

So in other words it was literally a throw away afterthought and not intended as a tool for the community to use.

GW can say there are two or three ways to play all they want, but if they don't make the tools, what the hell is the community going to use? The answer is the ones they provide (tournament matched play) or community rules.

I agree, limited time availability on some products is problematic. I very much advocate for a "Big Book of Campaign Play" and / or a "Big Book of Crusade", and that would be a perfect place for more generic (and hopefully improved) Planetstrike and Multiplayer rules. It's likely the approach they'll take in 10th if they decide to refine rather than reboot. And yes, it would have been better if they had done that from the start.

I still want to pick up the Vigilus Campaign books, though once again, I'll be skipping the mission packs., and I know the time to do so is running out.

PenitentJake wrote:
So just a heads up: we're all going to end up agreeing to disagree, and I don't bear anyone any ill will- but you guys know that trash talking Crusade is the verbal component for the second level "Summon PenitentJake" spell, right?

I wouldn't trash talk Crusade. I like Crusade. Waited a very long time to get my Tyranid and Chaos Crusade rules, now I just need the Guard ones and I can finally work out how I want to use that game style.

I will trash-talk the way GW has dealt with Crusade, splitting up the rules between tons of (now OOP) campaign books, but that's not a mark against Crusade as a concept*. And, at the same time, I'm not going to pretend that Crusade is a major focus of 9th Edition, or that tournaments aren't the main focus of 9th Edition.


*But that's a classic GW problem - great concepts, bad execution - not a Crusade problem.

PenitentJake wrote:
I won't bother with the first part of the sentence - I know not everyone likes 9th- especially here: but I would say the second part is way off- the territory rules in the DE dex, for example, create a whole new minigame. My favourite part of the Sisters dex is the Penitent/ Redemption agenda cycle. And even without those rules, I'd still say XP are more fun than RP... And you don't get those without Agendas, so those tie-in too.

The problem is those minigams are just solitaire, not a real narrative thing. Look at the Tau crusade rules. Great concept in theory, conquer a system and bring it into the Greater Good. But the rules are completely divorced from anything going on in the actual games. It's literally impossible to fail to conquer a system, no matter how many games you lose, because you can never lose military or diplomatic progress. The other players can never do anything outside of winning games (which they are already trying to do for their own reasons) to have any effect on your conquest. And you don't even need to be fighting against the theoretical owners of the system, you can conquer an Imperial system by winning a bunch of games against Orks and Necrons and losing every game against Imperial players. So why should anyone who cares about the story have any real interest in it? The non-Tau players certainly don't, and even for the Tau player it's mostly just extra bookkeeping to deal with before cashing in the final bonus to the on-table forces. Instead of telling a story you're grinding points until you reach the arbitrary total and start the next grind.

In short: decent idea, absolutely horrid execution.

If this is true, it's even more true of Matched Play Mission Packs- only the current GT pack is ever played- including at tournaments. If anything, Crusade packs have MORE longevity- if you want Planetstrike, the Crusade Mission Pack is where you find it, and that is going to be true no matter what season it is. Ditto for the rules for multiplayer games. Matched Play packs, on the other hand, have no theme to the missions they contain, and therefore, nothing to keep them relevant once the next set of generic MP missions arrive.

The difference is that competitive play is designed to be seasonal and frequently updated. Narrative games aren't. If you're a competitive player you expect that there will be frequent minor adjustments to the rules as the developer works to maintain balance and an interesting meta. But if you're a narrative player you would usually prefer if, for example, the wars of faith supplement isn't promptly ignored as soon as it's time to bring in a new book about fighting on space hulks. It's a needlessly fragmented mess of the wargame equivalent of one-shot RPG sessions and none of the content ever has time to grow. You just play through the scripted list of stuff one time (at most!) before you're on to the next micro-story.

(And sucks to be you if your army doesn't fit this season's narrative. You can sit on the sidelines and watch while everyone else plays the one-shot and hope that next season's theme is a better fit.)

Progression directly impacts almost all of the rules for the game itself, whether that's strats, unit types, unit identities, game size, detachment limits... it goes on and on.

Entanglement is not a good thing! Yes, Crusade's progression system involves more elements than in the past but that's only a good thing if that involvement happens in an interesting and well-designed way. And "you can't play 100 PL games until you and your opponent agree to spend 10 RP on 'increase game size' to unlock them" fails that test. The game would be much better if Crusade didn't interact with game size and you were free to choose the appropriate game size as required by the story.

So yes, I absolutely agree that previous editions, with better on-table representation of story events and character actions, were better for narrative gaming. A shallow on-table game with a bolted-on bookkeeping system is not a good narrative game.

I never read any of the FW campaign books, though I don't think I've heard anyone say a bad thing about them.

You really should, especially the very first ones from 4th edition and earlier where you had very specific forces (down to exact equipment choices) provided, asymmetrical and open-ended victory conditions, etc. Once you see how GW used to do a much better job of supporting narrative gaming I doubt you'll have such a favorable opinion of 9th edition's "play a tournament game except with a buff table for your units" effort.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
So just a heads up: we're all going to end up agreeing to disagree, and I don't bear anyone any ill will- but you guys know that trash talking Crusade is the verbal component for the second level "Summon PenitentJake" spell, right?

I wouldn't trash talk Crusade. I like Crusade. Waited a very long time to get my Tyranid and Chaos Crusade rules, now I just need the Guard ones and I can finally work out how I want to use that game style.

I will trash-talk the way GW has dealt with Crusade, splitting up the rules between tons of (now OOP) campaign books, but that's not a mark against Crusade as a concept*. And, at the same time, I'm not going to pretend that Crusade is a major focus of 9th Edition, or that tournaments aren't the main focus of 9th Edition.


*But that's a classic GW problem - great concepts, bad execution - not a Crusade problem.

and as I said it's not even purely a GW problem, when those new crusade books come out, no one talks about them here, they're COMPLETELY ignored.

Likewise, a sourcebook comes out with story stuff... ignored.

the ONLY conversations that seem to be had about the game are "How is matched play broken and does it benifit me?"

which is why as I said earlier 40k as a community would not respond positively at all if GW approcuhed 40k more like Battletech. could you imagine how dakkadakka would respond to Tamar rising?

"it's USELESS! THERE'S NO RULES! NO NEW MECHS! JUST SOME CRAPPY FLUFF AND SOME DUMB CAMPAIGN RULES!"

 Jidmah wrote:
There has been a crusade version of those rules, sadly they are horribly balanced so it's no fun playing them. The attacker simply always wins, the defender doesn't stand a chance. Fortifications simply aren't durable enough compared to the weapons armies bring.

To be fair, it's about time the attacker gets to auto-win after so many years of the original Planetstrike rules where the defender automatically wins unless they decide to give the attacker a chance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:
Basically, it is the old discussion of "should it be a wargame or should it be a war themed game".

You seem to have a very narrow definition of "wargame". If you want to complain about "war-themed games" then the target should be the stratagem mechanic turning 40k into a pseudo-CCG, not with abstraction in LOS. Wargames work just fine with highly abstracted LOS rules even if those rules don't suit your personal tastes.

@ 4th ed style height brackets: everything is fine and clear as long as both models are on the same elevation level or near the edges of a hill. As soon as they are not you have to use TLOS to see if this hill in between is high enough to block LoS, or you're throwing height advantage out of the game that is supposedly a wargame. This is a basic problem with grid based wargames.

Why do you need to use TLOS? Just have all terrain features have height brackets as well. If two models are at level 3 then a level 3 hill between them blocks LOS while a level 2 hill doesn't. And TBH wargames need this level of abstraction in practice anyway. If you need flat levels for models to sit on you might as well have them at neat bracket-height intervals to make everything clear. Same thing with "ambiguous" ruins, etc. Those diorama-style ruins/forests/etc look great in a painting contest but they're terrible in practice since you'll struggle to fit bases into them. Functional wargame terrain needs flat surfaces, clearly defined walls, etc, to represent the terrain without getting in the way of playing a game with physical miniatures.

I feel 40k discussion has almost always been tournament edition then. With occasional flourishes if GW do something off the wall with the fluff.

Ultimately rules are the things people argue over. Which is why community rules have the similar issues.

BrianDavion wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
So just a heads up: we're all going to end up agreeing to disagree, and I don't bear anyone any ill will- but you guys know that trash talking Crusade is the verbal component for the second level "Summon PenitentJake" spell, right?

I wouldn't trash talk Crusade. I like Crusade. Waited a very long time to get my Tyranid and Chaos Crusade rules, now I just need the Guard ones and I can finally work out how I want to use that game style.

I will trash-talk the way GW has dealt with Crusade, splitting up the rules between tons of (now OOP) campaign books, but that's not a mark against Crusade as a concept*. And, at the same time, I'm not going to pretend that Crusade is a major focus of 9th Edition, or that tournaments aren't the main focus of 9th Edition.


*But that's a classic GW problem - great concepts, bad execution - not a Crusade problem.

and as I said it's not even purely a GW problem, when those new crusade books come out, no one talks about them here, they're COMPLETELY ignored.

Likewise, a sourcebook comes out with story stuff... ignored.

the ONLY conversations that seem to be had about the game are "How is matched play broken and does it benifit me?"

which is why as I said earlier 40k as a community would not respond positively at all if GW approcuhed 40k more like Battletech. could you imagine how dakkadakka would respond to Tamar rising?

"it's USELESS! THERE'S NO RULES! NO NEW MECHS! JUST SOME CRAPPY FLUFF AND SOME DUMB CAMPAIGN RULES!"

And thats why I said people don't use those rules because the foundation is crap. 40k is already a bloated, aimless mess and bolting more rules on to its unfortunate carcass isn't going to help the situation. I'll reiterate what I said, people were on board when the original Apocalypse and City Fight came out. People were ready to play and excited for what Psychic Awakening (and WHFB: End Times come to think of it) promised to be, then it just turned out to be a big bunch of blech that just added more book keeping and people stopped caring. That didn't seem to discourage GW though who just keep nailing more bits onto their Chaos spawn and hoping it'll become a real daemon prince some day.

 Sim-Life wrote:
I'll reiterate what I said, people were on board when the original Apocalypse and City Fight came out.

Exactly. Was Apocalypse competitive? Hell no. It was a degenerate mess and barely even a game at all once you got above the very smallest level. But people loved it because it was a glorious spectacle. You saw the pictures of huge armies, models the size of a small child, etc, and you wanted to play that game. Maybe you didn't talk about it on forums very much because there wasn't much to say besides "MOAR MODELS PLEASE" but every time I saw a store or group advertise an Apocalypse game it drew a crowd.

People don't care about 9th edition narrative content because it's yet another D6 table tacked onto a game that already struggles with rules bloat. There's no heart in it, nothing to inspire you and make you want the new content. You just play a normal matched play game, except you roll a D6 each turn to see how many D3s worth of mortal wounds each of D6+1 units take because of "weather effects". Which is supposed to be different and exciting because the previous expansion had D3 units take D6 mortal wounds because of "carnivorous plants". Oh, and I guess you can roll a D6 to decide which buff effect your unit gets to have, most of which are already things you can do in the core game. I can't imagine why nobody really wants to talk about these games...

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
I won't bother with the first part of the sentence - I know not everyone likes 9th- especially here: but I would say the second part is way off- the territory rules in the DE dex, for example, create a whole new minigame. My favourite part of the Sisters dex is the Penitent/ Redemption agenda cycle. And even without those rules, I'd still say XP are more fun than RP... And you don't get those without Agendas, so those tie-in too.

The problem is those minigams are just solitaire, not a real narrative thing. Look at the Tau crusade rules. Great concept in theory, conquer a system and bring it into the Greater Good. But the rules are completely divorced from anything going on in the actual games. It's literally impossible to fail to conquer a system, no matter how many games you lose, because you can never lose military or diplomatic progress. The other players can never do anything outside of winning games (which they are already trying to do for their own reasons) to have any effect on your conquest. And you don't even need to be fighting against the theoretical owners of the system, you can conquer an Imperial system by winning a bunch of games against Orks and Necrons and losing every game against Imperial players. So why should anyone who cares about the story have any real interest in it? The non-Tau players certainly don't, and even for the Tau player it's mostly just extra bookkeeping to deal with before cashing in the final bonus to the on-table forces. Instead of telling a story you're grinding points until you reach the arbitrary total and start the next grind.

In short: decent idea, absolutely horrid execution.

You've perfectly encapsulated the problem I've had with Crusade but have been unable to fully put my finger on until now. I'd sum up Crusade's problems in one word: detached. Everything you do in the game feels detached from what happens post-game, in the sense that my opponent rarely interacts with it. Yes, the game result changes how many resources I may get post-game, but I rarely get the sense there's a coherent campaign going on with Crusades. It's just a bunch of post-hoc justification for what happened on the table that my opponent has no incentive to care about.

Compare that with the original Necromunda's campaign system. Most of that was also solitaire-esque but there were a few elements that really helped drive interaction between players. Some scenarios allowed you to steal territory from your opponent. You could have rivalries between individual fighters or gangs that had in-game effects. "Winning " the scenario was often not the main goal for some gangs, especially if they were outclassed by their opponents.

Slipspace wrote:
Compare that with the original Necromunda's campaign system. Most of that was also solitaire-esque but there were a few elements that really helped drive interaction between players. Some scenarios allowed you to steal territory from your opponent. You could have rivalries between individual fighters or gangs that had in-game effects. "Winning " the scenario was often not the main goal for some gangs, especially if they were outclassed by their opponents.

This is exactly what Crusade lacks. Which of the following scenarios provides a more compelling story:

Shas'O Farsight, desperate to turn the tide of the war for Vorlioc II, launches an audacious deep strike assault (1500 points vs. 2000 points of defenders) on the Imperial HQ. Sadly, the assault fails. Farsight barely escapes as his bodyguard gives their lives to buy him time to fall back to friendly territory, and he mourns the loss of even more friends to the hated foe. Even with their beloved hero still commanding the Tau forces the Imperial counter-attack pushes the Tau to the brink of annihilation. Only a single foothold remains and the encircling regiments of the Imperial Guard are closing in.

or

Shas'O Farsight needs three more military points to capture Vorlioc II from the Imperium and fights some local Dark Eldar pirates to gain them. Sadly, the battle is lost and no progress is made towards seizing the planet. Farsight waits for another opponent to emerge, meanwhile somewhere deep in the webway and completely unknown to the Tau a territory changes hands and the Dark Eldar leader plots his next raid against the Tyranids.

I think the answer here is pretty obvious. I will grant that decoupling Crusade advancement from a particular set of opponents is useful for avoiding real-world scheduling issues but if you're going to strip down the victory tracking elements into such a minimal thing why even have them at all? Cut the bookkeeping and remove the off-table stuff entirely.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I wouldn't trash talk Crusade. I like Crusade. Waited a very long time to get my Tyranid and Chaos Crusade rules, now I just need the Guard ones and I can finally work out how I want to use that game style.

I will trash-talk the way GW has dealt with Crusade, splitting up the rules between tons of (now OOP) campaign books, but that's not a mark against Crusade as a concept*. And, at the same time, I'm not going to pretend that Crusade is a major focus of 9th Edition, or that tournaments aren't the main focus of 9th Edition.


*But that's a classic GW problem - great concepts, bad execution - not a Crusade problem.

Yeah, that's why in the end, I didn't quote you. I had planned too, but while there were pieces of your post I disagreed with, in the context of the whole post... Our attitudes aren't as different as they seem on some of the small details. I just define what determines an edition's focus differently than you do. This edition, there has been more material published with Crusade content than without; there is also, at any given time, more active Crusade content than Matched content; and while matched gets frequent updates, very few of them impact Crusade. Given all that, I can't bring myself to define this as a tournament edition. Obviously, your criteria for determining what the focus of an edition is are different than mine, and that's okay- we generally align when it comes to Crusade itself.

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:


The problem is those minigams are just solitaire, not a real narrative thing.

Certainly another area for improvement. The Drukhari mini-game is the best because it does allow territories to be lost as well as gained. Certainly, the Tau rules you cite could be improved- in fact, I've taken matters into my own hands on that front, creating rules to harmonize the conquest rules for Tau, GSC and Tyranids. I'll post them in the rules section soon- just finishing the formatting.

My point is that, given what we have to work with from Crusade, it's easy to create what is needed. The afterthought progression systems of previous editions didn't give us a system for the Tau to conquer systems AT ALL, so rather than merely tweaking the rules we've got by adding mechanics for losing diplomacy or military points, we'd have to build the ENTIRE system. It's the same way building an eldar Path for Pilots is easier in 9th because we have the paths of the Warrior, Seer and Outcast to use as exemplars... But if we go back in time to 4th or 5th, we have NO paths, and we'd have to build ALL of them.

*Cityfight, Planetstrike and Planetary Empires did give us a bunch of tools to work with, of course, but they were add-ons rather than being integrated into the BRB and Dexes the way so much of the Crusade content is.

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:

So why should anyone who cares about the story have any real interest in it? The non-Tau players certainly don't, and even for the Tau player it's mostly just extra bookkeeping to deal with before cashing in the final bonus to the on-table forces. Instead of telling a story you're grinding points until you reach the arbitrary total and start the next grind.

In short: decent idea, absolutely horrid execution.

I think that in order to get the most out of Crusade, you are best off playing in a campaign with a GM, and when you do, it's the GM's role to organize the tools GW gives us in order to create a story. Again, the point I'm making is that previous editions didn't provide as many tools, so creating a similar experience in any of those versions would have meant building EVERYTHING from scratch, because the entire progression system was 3 battle honour charts that applied to every army in the game, and an extremely simplified single way for every army in the game to earn those honours (basically by winning or killing).

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:


The difference is that competitive play is designed to be seasonal and frequently updated. Narrative games aren't. If you're a competitive player you expect that there will be frequent minor adjustments to the rules as the developer works to maintain balance and an interesting meta. But if you're a narrative player you would usually prefer if, for example, the wars of faith supplement isn't promptly ignored as soon as it's time to bring in a new book about fighting on space hulks.

As I'm sure you say from my initial post, you and I (and HBMC) are all on the same page here- the Planetstrike and multiplayer missions should never have been burried in a limited time only campaign book. A "Big Book of Campaigns" would have been a perfect place for rules like these, and such a book could continue to be available for the entire edition, as it would be disconnected from any particular campaign setting.

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:

It's a needlessly fragmented mess of the wargame equivalent of one-shot RPG sessions and none of the content ever has time to grow. You just play through the scripted list of stuff one time (at most!) before you're on to the next micro-story.

(And sucks to be you if your army doesn't fit this season's narrative. You can sit on the sidelines and watch while everyone else plays the one-shot and hope that next season's theme is a better fit.)

Well... sort of. Again, there's certainly room for improvement, but I don't think it's as bad as this quote implies.

In my RPG group, our GM incorporates modules into his original work all the time. So that one-off or three-session arc forms a part of the history of the party. Crusade campaigns are similar: let's say I'm working on the story of a particular Preceptory of SoB. They might have sent a detachment or two to both Charadon and Octarius. Later, when I'm bringing that Preceptory to a home brew campaign set in the Pacificus Sector, there's no reason the Preceptory can't send the detachments that previously participated in Octarius, or Charadon, or even both.

What you call Micro-stories, other players might call Episodes, or Chapters.

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:


Entanglement is not a good thing! Yes, Crusade's progression system involves more elements than in the past but that's only a good thing if that involvement happens in an interesting and well-designed way. And "you can't play 100 PL games until you and your opponent agree to spend 10 RP on 'increase game size' to unlock them" fails that test. The game would be much better if Crusade didn't interact with game size and you were free to choose the appropriate game size as required by the story.

So yes, I absolutely agree that previous editions, with better on-table representation of story events and character actions, were better for narrative gaming. A shallow on-table game with a bolted-on bookkeeping system is not a good narrative game.

I do think a paragraph added to the BRB Crusade rules that allows explicitly allows you to begin Crusading in Medias Res would be an excellent addition to the game. It's really, really easy to do... But it might have been nice for GW to include the option in order to make it official. It isn't just the size of the Order of Battle that could start in progress- you could also do it with a base experience level:

"Okay guys, for this campaign, we're going to start with 100PL of Blooded units."

I also really, really have to push back against this "Better representation of story events and battlefield action" piece.

The only editions of this game I skipped were 6th and 7th- other than that hiatus, I've been playing since '89. If actions existed in any edition before 9th, I certainly don't remember them. Agendas, detachments, battlefield actions are now WAY more developed than they ever have been. Agendas facilitate dynamic battles by adding objectives that are unrelated to victory conditions- which is an absolutely groundbreaking addition to narrative gaming. Battlefield actions are another cool innovation, and they are often linked with agendas which multiplies the narrative potential. Detachments allow a player additional ways to express the character of their army by creating different chains of command within the force.

As for the parenthical conclusion to this quote, hang on to that for a second, because...

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:

I never read any of the FW campaign books, though I don't think I've heard anyone say a bad thing about them.

You really should, especially the very first ones from 4th edition and earlier where you had very specific forces (down to exact equipment choices) provided, asymmetrical and open-ended victory conditions, etc.

So how can you condemn Crusade because some forces might not be as included in a particular story arc, while simultaneously praising a previous edition for telling you not only which armies you must use in order to participate, but also which specific units and load outs from those armies? I mean, that is what you just did right? Or am I missing something?

I mean, I can happily direct you to 100 or more pages of digital rage about how one dude in an army isn't allowed to take a jump pack anymore. Why would anyone who is as pissed about that as they are ever want to play a game where their unit choices and load-outs were beyond their control?

Armies of Renown sound like a far better way to achieve a similar but less restrictive objective.

 Shas'O Ky'husa wrote:

Once you see how GW used to do a much better job of supporting narrative gaming I doubt you'll have such a favorable opinion of 9th edition's "play a tournament game except with a buff table for your units" effort.

People have said this to me before, but I think they don't really understand my preferences when it comes to gaming.

Long story short: if FW campaign books don't allow a BSS unit to swear a Penitent Oath and become Repentia and then redeem themselves and become an elite unit; if they don't allow a DE play to acquire territory in Commorragh which they can then use to support units who would most benefit from those territories; if I can't infiltrate planetary institutions so that I can exploit those resources in future games...

Well, if you don't give me the rules to do those things, all the campaign maps, well-written fluff, and force designations in the world aren't going to make up for that loss. I'll stick to Crusade, any day of the week. Especially since a) those FW campaign books are now even more out of date than Octarius Mission Packs and b) even in their peak availability, they could only be obtained by mail order at prices higher than GW's. The relative inaccessibility of Forge World material has always been a barrier to its use.

Not saying I wouldn't read one if it fell into my hands- I could learn a lot about ways to improve the fluff parts of my campaigns- but I doubt that any of the crunch would appeal to me the way Crusade crunch does. Same way I'll always prefer D&D 3.5 to D&D 5.0.

PenitentJake wrote:
My point is that, given what we have to work with from Crusade, it's easy to create what is needed. The afterthought progression systems of previous editions didn't give us a system for the Tau to conquer systems AT ALL, so rather than merely tweaking the rules we've got by adding mechanics for losing diplomacy or military points, we'd have to build the ENTIRE system. It's the same way building an eldar Path for Pilots is easier in 9th because we have the paths of the Warrior, Seer and Outcast to use as exemplars... But if we go back in time to 4th or 5th, we have NO paths, and we'd have to build ALL of them.

This isn't really an advantage. By the time you've written an interesting and engaging planetary conquest system where all players have agency, defeat is possible, battle outcomes are related to the on-table events, etc, you've written a new system with very little, if anything, of the original rules left. And TBH having the existing rules makes it harder, not easier. Instead of starting from a blank slate you have all the baggage of the solitaire bookkeeping game holding you back. And because rules exist you have the issue of people preferring to use the official rules because they are official, where with a blank slate at least everyone has to agree that the players need to create something beyond the official rules.

I think that in order to get the most out of Crusade, you are best off playing in a campaign with a GM, and when you do, it's the GM's role to organize the tools GW gives us in order to create a story. Again, the point I'm making is that previous editions didn't provide as many tools, so creating a similar experience in any of those versions would have meant building EVERYTHING from scratch, because the entire progression system was 3 battle honour charts that applied to every army in the game, and an extremely simplified single way for every army in the game to earn those honours (basically by winning or killing).

First of all, needing a GM is a major problem. The one thing Crusade did well was to decouple your individual army from any specific group, in the process eliminating all of the real-life scheduling and commitment issues that derailed the majority of previous campaign attempts. Needing a GM throws that away entirely.

Second, who cares about those "tools"? A D6 table of buff effects has pretty much zero value. Even if you want one in your games a decent GM can throw it together in 5-10 minutes. And it's maybe 5% at most of a genuine GM-run narrative campaign. The GM is still going to be doing virtually all of the work they'd be doing in previous editions, except now they have the baggage of the existing half-finished system to work around.

In my RPG group, our GM incorporates modules into his original work all the time. So that one-off or three-session arc forms a part of the history of the party. Crusade campaigns are similar: let's say I'm working on the story of a particular Preceptory of SoB. They might have sent a detachment or two to both Charadon and Octarius. Later, when I'm bringing that Preceptory to a home brew campaign set in the Pacificus Sector, there's no reason the Preceptory can't send the detachments that previously participated in Octarius, or Charadon, or even both.

Sure, that's fine if you fit the narrative for that. But what if my army isn't thematically appropriate for Charadon? What if I'm playing Tyranids that have no thematic place in a war of faith campaign? What if my Charadon army isn't thematically appropriate for Octarius, or I just want to finish the story in Charadon before moving on to something else? The fragmentation encourages you to make a new army for each story, and then discard it a game or three later because next season's book is something completely different.

I do think a paragraph added to the BRB Crusade rules that allows explicitly allows you to begin Crusading in Medias Res would be an excellent addition to the game. It's really, really easy to do... But it might have been nice for GW to include the option in order to make it official. It isn't just the size of the Order of Battle that could start in progress- you could also do it with a base experience level:

That's an easy solution but it undermines your point about the virtues of entangled rules. If tying things like game size to the progression mechanic requires an explicit option to by pass the progression mechanic and set game size independent from progression why have it tied in the first place?

The only editions of this game I skipped were 6th and 7th- other than that hiatus, I've been playing since '89. If actions existed in any edition before 9th, I certainly don't remember them. Agendas, detachments, battlefield actions are now WAY more developed than they ever have been. Agendas facilitate dynamic battles by adding objectives that are unrelated to victory conditions- which is an absolutely groundbreaking addition to narrative gaming. Battlefield actions are another cool innovation, and they are often linked with agendas which multiplies the narrative potential. Detachments allow a player additional ways to express the character of their army by creating different chains of command within the force.

Asymmetrical objectives and objectives other than "claim objective 3" or "claim more than half the objectives" existed long before Crusade was a thing. Meanwhile the simulation aspect of the on-table story has been absolutely gutted. Want to have your unit fire suppressing shots to pin the enemy in place? Nope. Want to flank the enemy and ambush them from an unexpected direction? Nope. Want to terrify the enemy into falling back? Nope (but you can do D3 extra mortal wounds). Unless you have a specific stratagem for one (and only one) unit per turn to do the thing forget it. All units can do is move, roll attack dice, and occasionally do a generic mission action.

So how can you condemn Crusade because some forces might not be as included in a particular story arc, while simultaneously praising a previous edition for telling you not only which armies you must use in order to participate, but also which specific units and load outs from those armies? I mean, that is what you just did right? Or am I missing something?

Different games, different expectations. IA3 and its campaign material represent a specific historical campaign and the rules are appropriate for this. You're playing the Taros campaign, a historical event involving the Imperial counter-attack on a recently claimed Tau world. So of course you have specific forces and missions appropriate for that story. Crusade, on the other hand, is supposed to be an open-ended system for a wide variety of stories and forces.

And I praise the FW books for their creativity in narrative mechanics, not the specific implementation of those mechanics. They are an example of what is possible when you think outside the box of "play a tournament game, but with a D6 upgrade table", something Crusade fails to do.

Same way I'll always prefer D&D 3.5 to D&D 5.0.

Seriously? You're a narrative player in 40k, but in D&D you like the game that gets hopelessly bogged down in a million character optimization choices? I don't think I've ever seen anyone prefer 3.5e to 5e who isn't a hardcore min/max-er playing a 3.5e character with +40 to their best skills at level 1 because some obscure combination of items/feats/etc in a long-forgotten supplement book allows it. All of the story-focused players I've talked to have moved on to 5e, a game that is more about roleplaying than character optimization.

PenitentJake wrote:
So just a heads up: we're all going to end up agreeing to disagree, and I don't bear anyone any ill will- but you guys know that trash talking Crusade is the verbal component for the second level "Summon PenitentJake" spell, right?

 Sledgehammer wrote:


The problem with crusade is that it is built on a poor foundation to start with, and truly offers very little additional value except for spending and gaining rp.

I won't bother with the first part of the sentence - I know not everyone likes 9th- especially here: but I would say the second part is way off- the territory rules in the DE dex, for example, create a whole new minigame. My favourite part of the Sisters dex is the Penitent/ Redemption agenda cycle. And even without those rules, I'd still say XP are more fun than RP... And you don't get those without Agendas, so those tie-in too.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

In addition their "campaign" books are not written with a specific goal in mind and come across as schizophrenic throw away bloat that primarily is used for just a couple of pages by the community at large. To top it off its all going to go in the dumpster in the next year when the next edition comes out.

If this is true, it's even more true of Matched Play Mission Packs- only the current GT pack is ever played- including at tournaments. If anything, Crusade packs have MORE longevity- if you want Planetstrike, the Crusade Mission Pack is where you find it, and that is going to be true no matter what season it is. Ditto for the rules for multiplayer games. Matched Play packs, on the other hand, have no theme to the missions they contain, and therefore, nothing to keep them relevant once the next set of generic MP missions arrive.

And ALL books "go in the dumpster" when a new edition drops- the BRB, the Dexes... All of it. That ain't a Crusade issue, nor is it any worse for Crusade than it is for anything else that gets dumped... Which, again, is EVERYTHING.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

By contrast 5th edition proved to be a much better foundation.

You might prefer it, and that's a valid opinion. But love it or hate it, 9th ed's symbiosis between its core rules and its progression system is far greater than the symbiosis between the core rules and any of the afterthought progression systems provided with any previous edition. Progression directly impacts almost all of the rules for the game itself, whether that's strats, unit types, unit identities, game size, detachment limits... it goes on and on. You might prefer armour facings, going to ground mechanics, blast templates, and maybe most importantly: diverse equipment and load out options for every unit- that's certainly valid... but the interaction between those rules and any previous attempt at a progression system is nowhere near as great as the numerous layers of interactions with relics, strats and datacards.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

One that actually allowed for all of the forge world books to persist until 7th edition along with planet strike and apocalypse.

Just like all the other 8th edition stuff can still be used with 9th. When 10th comes, I don't think it'll be a full reset either... Though I suppose it could be.

I never read any of the FW campaign books, though I don't think I've heard anyone say a bad thing about them. I won't argue that current campaign books couldn't be improved- we certainly don't need 5 per season. The limited time availability of them is certainly problematic as well.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

So in other words it was literally a throw away afterthought and not intended as a tool for the community to use.

GW can say there are two or three ways to play all they want, but if they don't make the tools, what the hell is the community going to use? The answer is the ones they provide (tournament matched play) or community rules.

I agree, limited time availability on some products is problematic. I very much advocate for a "Big Book of Campaign Play" and / or a "Big Book of Crusade", and that would be a perfect place for more generic (and hopefully improved) Planetstrike and Multiplayer rules. It's likely the approach they'll take in 10th if they decide to refine rather than reboot. And yes, it would have been better if they had done that from the start.

I still want to pick up the Vigilus Campaign books, though once again, I'll be skipping the mission packs., and I know the time to do so is running out.

Like others have said crusade offers NOTHING in the form of fostering a shared narrative experience. It is wholly confined to the specific army and codex that you are playing, and some haven't even gotten a codex (guard). A fundamentally solitary narrative experience is antithetical the very nature of a narrative campaign. Crusade comes down to a book keeping exercise where neither player is invested in or fighting over shared goals or objectives. It defeats the purpose of a narrative campaign.

Never played or GM'd a crusade (hoping to change that soonish), but I could see having the existing rules to act as a starting point being a handy crutch for those who aren't sure where to start with making custom rules. For anyone that feels sufficiently confident in their abilities to start from scratch, I could see existing rules being something tht could muddy the waters.

Also, I'll say that I'm not a hardcore min/max'er and I do prefer 3.5e, but I also really like 5e. That said, in 3.5 I tended to min/max towards the character idea I had in mind. I always like to play an incarnate golem War Hulk so I'd have stupidly high strength, then I'd grapple enemies and use them as clubs (not the most effective of weapons, but it was fun). I wouldn't call that hardcore min/max, but if you do you can ignore this heh. Either way...they did a great job with capturing a lot of the spirit of 3.5e in 5e. I mostly miss all the prestige classes, not that I can't have just as much fun without them.